Planter

Seeds for Rails applications can get complicated fast, and Rails doesn't provide much for assisting with this process. This plugin seeks to rectify that by providing easy ways to seed specific tables.

Features include:

• Seed tables from CSV files, an array of hashes, or custom methods.
• Call specific seeders with rails planter:seed SEEDERS=users,addresses.
• Control the number of records being created.
• Seed associations.

You can view the documentation here.

Installation

Add the following line to your application's Gemfile. Because this plugin is currently a pre-release version, it's recommended to lock it to a specific version, as breaking changes may occur, even at the minor level.

gem 'planter', '0.2.0'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install planter

Usage

Let's assume you'd like to seed your users table.

To get started, run rails generate planter:initializer, which will create config/initializers/planter.rb with the following contents.

require 'planter'

Planter.configure do |config|
  ##
  # The list of seeders. These files are stored in the
  # config.seeders_directory, which can be changed below. When a new
  # seeder is generated, it will be appended to the bottom of this
  # list. If the order is incorrect, you'll need to adjust it.
  # Just be sure to keep the ending bracket on its own line, or the
  # generator won't know where to put new elements.
  config.seeders = %i[
  ]

  ##
  # The directory where the seeders are kept.
  # config.seeders_directory = 'db/seeds'

  ##
  # The directory where CSVs are kept.
  # config.csv_files_directory = 'db/seed_files'

  ##
  # The default trim mode for ERB. Valid modes are:
  # '%'  enables Ruby code processing for lines beginning with %
  # '<>' omit newline for lines starting with <% and ending in %>
  # '>'  omit newline for lines ending in %>
  # '-'  omit blank lines ending in -%>
  # I recommend reading the help documentation for ERB::new()
  # config.erb_trim_mode = nil
end

By default, a planter:seed task is provided for seeding your application. This allows you to use db:seed for other purposes. If you want Planter to hook into the existing db:seed task, simply add the following to db/seeds.rb.

# db/seeds.rb
Planter.seed

To create a users seeder, run rails generate planter:seeder users. Usually, seeders seed a specific table, so it's recommended to name your seeders after the table. If you don't, you'll need to manually specify a few things. More on that later. This will create a file named db/seeds/users_seeder.rb (the directory will be created if it doesn't exist) with the following contents.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  # TODO: Choose a seeding_method. For example:
  # seeding_method :csv

  # For now, we overload the seed method so no exception will be raised.
  def seed
  end
end

This also adds users to the config.seeders array in our initializer. A few things to note.

• The seeder will always be appended at the end of the array. If this is not the correct order, you'll need to adjust the array manually.
• When adjusting the array, always keep the closing bracket on its own line, or the generator won't know where to put the new seeders.

If you want to generate a seeder for every table currently in your database, run rails generate planter:seeder ALL.

You then need to choose a seeding method, of which there are currently three.

Seeding from CSV

To seed from CSV, you simply need to add the following to your seeder class.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  seeding_method :csv
end

Then, create a directory called db/seed_files, and create a csv file called db/seed_files/users.csv. In this file, the header should be the field names, and the rest of the rows should be the corresponding data.

email,username
test1@example.com,test1
test2@example.com,test2

If the CSV file is named differently than the seeder, you can specify the :csv_name option. Note that the value should not include the file extension.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  seeding_method :csv, csv_name: :people
end

ERB can be used in the CSV files if you end the file name with .csv.erb or .erb.csv. For example, users.csv.erb. When using ERB, instance variables set in the seeder can be used in the CSV.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  seeding_method :csv, csv_name: :people

  def initialize
    @name_prefix = 'Test User'
  end
end

participant_id,name
<%= Participant.find_by(email: 'test1@example.com').id %>,<%= @name_prefix %> 1
<%= Participant.find_by(email: 'test2@example.com').id %>,<%= @name_prefix %> 2

Note that, if you need to change the trim mode for ERB, you can set a default in the initializer.

Planter.configure do |config|
  config.seeders = %i[
    users
  ]
  config.erb_trim_mode = '<>'
end

...or, for individual seeders, via seeding_method.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  seeding_method :csv, erb_trim_mode: '<>'
end

For help with erb_trim_mode, see the help documentation for ERB::new.

Lastly, it's worth mentioning transformations under the CSV section, as that's usually the pace where they're needed most, but it will work with any method.

If you're seeding with a CSV, and it contains values that need to have code executed on them before it's imported into the database, you can define an instance variable called @transformations, or a method called transformations, that returns a Hash of field names, and Procs to run on the value. For example, if you have an admin column, and the CSV contains "true", it will come through as a String, but you probably want it to be a Boolean. This can be solved with the following.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  seeding_method :csv

  def transformations
    {
      admin: ->(value) { value == 'true' },
      last_name: ->(value, row) { "#{value} #{row[:suffix]}".squish }
    }
  end
end

When defining a Proc/Lambda, you can make it accept 0, 1, or 2 arguments.

• When 0, the value is replaced by the result of the Lambda
• When 1, the value is passed to the Lambda, and is subsequently replaced by the result of the Lambda
• When 2, the value is the first argument, and the entire row, as a Hash, is the second argument. This allows for more complicated transformations that can be dependent on other fields and values in the record.

Running rails planter:seed will now seed your users table.

Seeding from a data array

If you need dynamic seeds, you can add something similar to the following to your seeder class. In this example, we'll use faker.

require 'faker' # You could just require this in `db/seeds.rb`.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  seeding_method :data_array, number_of_records: 10

  def data
    [{
      email: Faker::Internet.email,
      username: Faker::Name.name
    }]
  end
end

The number_of_records option allows you to only create one array element, but create ten records. If you leave this option off, you'll need your array to have ten elements to create ten records. It's also worth noting that setting an instance variable called @data from an initialize method would also work, as the Planter::Seeder parent class automatically provides attr_reader :data.

Running rails planter:seed should now seed your users table.

You can also seed children records for every existing record of a parent model. For example, to seed an address for every user, you'd need to create an AddressesSeeder that uses the parent option, as seen below. This option should be the name of the belongs_to association in your model. The primary key, foreign key, and model name of the parent will all be determined by reflecting on the association.

require 'faker'

class AddressesSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  seeding_method :data_array, parent: :user

  def data
    [{
      street: Faker::Address.street_address,
      city: Faker::Address.city,
      state: Faker::Address.state_abbr,
      zip: Faker::Address.zip
    }]
  end
end

Note that specifying number_of_records in this instance will create that many records for each record of the parent model.

Custom seeds

To write your own custom seeds, just overload the seed method and do whatever you need to do.

class UsersSeeder < Planter::Seeder
  USERS = {
    'test1@example.com' => { username: 'John Smith' },
    'test2@example.com' => { username: 'Jane Smith' }
  }

  def seed
    USERS.each { |email, attrs| User.where(email: email).first_or_create!(attrs) }
  end
end

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Reporting Bugs and Requesting Features

If you have an idea or find a bug, please create an issue. Just make sure the topic doesn't already exist. Better yet, you can always submit a Pull Request.

Self-Promotion

I do these projects for fun, and I enjoy knowing that they're helpful to people. Consider starring the repository if you like it! If you love it, follow me on GitHub!